The present invention relates to the synchronization of data streams for broadcast applications. More specifically, the invention relates to a device and a method for simultaneous data delivery in a system-on-a-chip environment.
Large Systems-on-a-Chip (SOCs) usually consist of several building blocks each of them comprising data processing units, potentially together with a local controller, that perform some sort of defined (sub-) task. Such SoCs are employed for mobile communication applications, e.g., but not exclusively.
In the case of an SoC for wireless communication applications, these building blocks are the various components of the transmit and receive system, such as for example an input filter unit, a demodulation unit, a forward error correction (FEC) unit, a fast Fourier transform (FFT) unit, a parameter estimation unit and the like, which components will be coupled to each other in a chain, ring, or some combination of such schemes, depending on the data processing algorithms used. With such an architecture, it might be desired or necessary for a particular unit or processing stage to simultaneously deliver the same data to two or more subsequent processing units or stages, which units will then work in parallel using the same input data to perform different processing tasks. To give an example, a data element can be transferred to two filters which work in parallel to each apply a different filter function on the same input data element.
More generally speaking, there is a system, where data streams have to be broadcasted by a transmitting unit to a plurality of receiving units which is exemplified in FIG. 1 by transmitter 10 and receivers 1-3. Since each data stream to a respective receiver has a different speed and each receiver acts independently, the transmitter, after having sent a first data word, Data1 in FIG. 1, has to wait a predefined time which accounts for the maximum predictable latency of the respective receivers before the second data word, Data2, is transmitted to ensure that all receivers have received the first data word before the second data word is delivered.
It is an object of the present invention to accelerate processing in systems-on-a-chip. More particular, an object of the invention is to speed-up data delivery to parallel working processing units.